Electronica at Last !

I've been meaning to put something on here for.....well years, about electronic projects and useful stuff and finally decided to today after i was reading some useful PIC and design stuff.

A number of projects based on the PIC16F84A got me started.....then i discovered the 16F88! Cheaper and far better in every respect, this has now become my standard PIC of choice for current design work.

Here's a few links to stuff i've found useful so far whilst designing stuff using PIC's:

Try TinyCAD, for your schematics, a great CAD package and it's free too!!

How about FREEPCB, it does exactly what it says on the tin! It's Free and it's a PCB design package.

And for Gerber manipulation (convert to other formats for printing if required!) try GerbMagic.

Don't forget your bypass! After blagging it on a development board, on a final board i had problems, time to use proper design concepts! Fit those caps and if you're not sure why (apart from the fact that you have a misbehaving (P)IC) check out this useful site! Or you could just learn the hard way like i did!

Also found some great little TO220 packaged logic level FET's drive up to 42A from your PIC's channels? Oh yes please! And very reasonable too (link and part number here soon....it's a Fairchild device available at Farnell). Just run out of them last batch were about 60p each.